Survey highlights flexibility penalty for mums
Despite the post-Covid move to more flexible working, many mums are struggling to get the...read more
I’m learning how to tie dye curtains. When I say learning, I am watching a Youtube video. All my DIY skills come from youtube tutorials. Currently we have several DIY situations in the house – the oven door smashed over Christmas because the hinge didn’t work and my hand slipped [we are using the top oven grill thing]; the toilet flush requires a carefully negotiated post-flush adjustment of the button which only I am trained to do; there are damp patches in one bedroom and the bathroom. The washing machine is also slightly temperamental, but a strategic kick to the front usually gets it going. This weekend I have tackled the damp patch with damp block paint, although during the process the entire paintbrush [I think from Poundland and possibly not a good investment] disintegrated onto the wall. We now have a sort of brush effect at the top of the wall. I am either going to pick out all the brush bits in due course or get some more of the £1 paintbrushes and do the whole wall in a paint plus brush effect.
Anyway, back to the curtains. In fact, it is one single blue curtain. Daughter one has moved into the cubby hole [called the ‘secret room’ by only son] downstairs. She has decided to decorate. We’ve got some dye off eBay and I suggested a kind of mottled tie dye effect would look good. I thought this was fairly simple. Apparently it involves plastic bottles, bags, elastic bands and “lots of mess”. Uh oh. In the US version of Youtube is also requires something called soda ash and a bin. I have the bin ready to go. I have no idea what soda ash is, but I wondered briefly if bicarbonate of soda would double up. Only son is inevitably going to want to “help”, as he did with the damp proofing [he ran off to fetch his waterproof paints] so the whole thing has to be carefully timed for the bit at the end of the afternoon where he collapses only to awake full of energy and refuse to go to bed again till 9pm. In the books they advise keeping small children awake so they will fall asleep later. This does not work on only son. Once he is asleep not even dinosaurs roaring in his ear could wake him. On Saturday he fell asleep in the queue for the swimming pool despite expressing high levels of excitement for getting in the water only minutes earlier.
We are also planning spray painting an old wardrobe which has been fitted with shelves by my mum’s husband. Daughter one wants to make it look like the Tardis. I fear this may be a tad ambitious. The aim is to make her room look swag, but not hipster. It’s apparently a hard trick to pull off. Half the room is covered in posters of Kerrang! groups. She wants the other half to be painted dark purple. “It’s going to look like a dark hole in there,” I tried to reason. “That’s exactly what I want,” she replied. My brother painted his room black at a similar age. I’m not sure if his hamster was very impressed. It attempted several escapes and was eventually found at the top of the stairs in the jaws of my cat. My brother has never forgiven the entire cat species, but I rather suspect the black paint and on a loop playing of the Velvet Underground may have played a key role in that tragedy.